Naked (11 page)

I blink, his seriousness taking me by surprise.

I look into his kind hazel eyes, which are a bit closer than I’m used to in this tiny space. I wish I knew more about him and what those eyes have seen.

But that would mean him knowing more about me and what I’ve seen… I don’t even want to know the things I’ve seen. I definitely don’t want him to.

Now he’s looking at me. At my mouth. And suddenly I find it very hard to do anything but feel an excited anticipation.

For a second, I think he might kiss me.

For a second, I want him to.

I lean toward him, hoping he’ll meet me, ready for it to happen, when he instead asks me something I didn’t expect.

“What happened to you?” he says lightly, looking down at his hands like he’s afraid of my reaction.

My stomach drops, and I look away. I was kind of hoping to avoid this conversation…like forever. “What do you mean?”

“Well, we said we needed to get to know each other…for the project, I mean.”

My eyebrows pull up, and I look away, unsure of how I should be feeling about this right now.

“I don’t mean to pry. It’s your business, it’s just… I’m curious about you.”

I nod but won’t look him in the eyes anymore. “What do you want to know?” I force myself to say.

“Everything,” he whispers, and a blush inches across his cheeks. “Like was it really you in the missing posters?”

I nod, knowing there’s no way of getting around that.

“So what happened? You don’t have to tell me,” he says. Contradicting himself.

I take in a deep breath. Here goes nothing.

“I grew up here, but I had some problems with my parents. Or they had problems with me…” My stomach twists even thinking about my past. Somehow, here in this tree with Jackson, I’m not that girl.

I’m not the lost and lonely but pretending to be okay thirteen-year-old, and I’m not Exquisite the hooker. I’m…just Anna. And talking about my past, any of it, would be like marring this moment.

“…so I moved in with my cousin in New York City.” I wince, calling Luis my cousin, but how else can I explain this? Not like I haven’t lied to the police about who Luis is before, anyway. I once had to pretend he was my brother so he could bail me out of jail. Talk about embarrassing.

“What about the posters? Your parents were looking for you.”

I nod, hating how easily the lies come. “I didn’t tell them where I went. Took them a long time to figure it out.”

“That’s not so bad. The way people talk about you, and sometimes the way you react to things, I thought…” He looks down at his hands, his feet no longer swinging.

“I know. I get it. Just because it’s easy to explain like that doesn’t mean it’s simple. Life in New York…wasn’t the easiest thing in the world.”

My eyes sting, tears threatening to expose me, but I keep it under control. He can’t see what’s really underneath.

What would he think if he saw the real me? The disgusting bits that I won’t let see the light of day?

Would he still like me? Still be my friend?

If I never stop hiding, can my wounds ever really heal?

Because as much as I like to think about my nightmares as scars…I know that’s not true. Scars are healed wounds. Mine are still festering.

Jackson’s hand brushes against my cheek, right there in that stupid little tree house in our own mini Central Park, and my stomach flutters. I take a deep breath, holding on to that feeling, and then it spreads from my head to my toes.

I want him to pull me closer. I lick my lips, wondering what he’ll do.

He leans in and kisses my cheek, then pulls away and points to the way we came. “We should head back.”

I take a long look out of the tree house, at the world around me, and let myself cool down. I don’t want him to see how much I enjoyed his lips on my cheek. How much I wanted him to kiss me on my mouth.

Finally, I let him lead the way out of the tree house.

My cheek’s still on fire from where he touched me.

Would he still look at me like this if he knew who I really was?

I can’t tell him the truth. It’s not worth the risk. I can’t do it. I won’t.

But maybe he doesn’t need to know the truth.

That part of my life is gone.

I have a chance for something new now.

I have a chance for something good.

Chapter Nineteen

H
e walks me all the way home, and things are real quiet between us. Now that we’re so far from the tree house, I can’t help but wonder why he didn’t kiss me. I mean really kiss me. On the lips. Did he see something in me he doesn’t want?

“Hey, I was wondering,” he says. “Homecoming is next weekend. Would you, I mean, do you want to go?”

Oh.

“Homecoming?”

Seriously? That’s another high school thing I thought was long behind me.

And absolutely something I never thought he’d ask.

“Yeah,” he says. “I was just going to go with some friends, but if you wanted to go with me…”

“Oh… I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” His face falls for an instant so I quickly say, “Not you, I mean. The dance. I get enough looks at school.”

“Yeah, I know. I get enough looks at school, too.” He smirks. “But I still want to go with you.”

“Maybe.”

“Just think about it.”

“Okay,” I say. Smooth. “Thanks, you know, for showing me around the neighborhood and stuff.” Wow, that sounds stupid.

“Sure,” he says, then waves good-bye and walks back toward his house.

I wait for a moment, unsure what to do, what to say. What to think.

Homecoming. Pretty sure that’s something Luis and I used to laugh about, how stupid those things were. How we were so far beyond that.

But maybe I’m not as far beyond it as I thought.

I walk inside to see the dog chained in the entryway again. She’s sitting up, her ears perked, when I walk in. She takes a step forward and nudges my hand with her nose. I give her a quick rub behind the ears.

I look up and my gaze crashes into my surprised mom standing in the hallway, holding a towel and a coffee mug. Her eyes narrow as she looks from the dog to me, but then she smiles and says, “Hey, honey.”

I wait for her to say something about Zara. She told me once already to keep my distance.

But I guess she’s going to take a chance, because instead she goes back to drying the dishes and says, “I almost didn’t hear you come in. We got a huge vicious dog, and he doesn’t even bark when people walk in the house.”

Did my mom seriously just make a joke?

Maybe I should laugh, but it’s so weird.

“It’s not a he,” I finally say.

“What?”

I raise my eyebrow. “Mom. It’s a girl dog.”

She looks at the dog, at me, back at the dog. “How do you know?”

“How do you not know? She doesn’t have boy parts, pretty simple.”

“Are you sure?” She puts her towel down. “Well,” she says and clears her throat. “They told us he was neutered when we got him. We just assumed.”

I stand at the edge of the kitchen, able to see both my mother and the dog. “You know a dog is supposed to be more than just protection. They have feelings.”

“I know they do.” She pauses. “Is there something else you think we should be doing?”

After a moment, I say, “We should call her Zara.”

My mom takes a deep breath. “Okay, honey. Dinner will be ready in an hour.”

I pause to look at Zara, who’s watching me with those big brown eyes, her tail twitching. I’d like to take her with me now, but I think I’d still rather keep our relationship secret if I can. I don’t need one more thing to fight about with the parents who clearly still don’t know what to think about me.

I play a little music and lie on my bed and try to pretend I am someone else.

I listen down the hall as my mother huffs and puffs, trying to coax Zara outside. By the sounds of it, she’s not having an easy time.

About a half hour later I know my father is home because Zara is barking like crazy. I hear the door open, my father yell at her to shut up, then footsteps to the back door. He must be putting her outside.

I sigh. I wish he’d treat her better. I pick up my math book and decide to make an attempt at homework, honestly just for something to do. I should have stayed in the woods, if you can call that little batch of trees that. It was much better than sitting here doing nothing.

Finally I hear a knock on my door. “Dinner’s ready.”

I head to the dining room to a nice big dinner. Grilled chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, carrots, and fresh dinner rolls. My stomach growls just looking at it.

This time I’ll try to finish the full meal before starting a fight. Yes, that sounds like a good plan.

“How was your day, sweetheart?”

I look up, unsure if my father was talking to me or my mom. They’re both looking at me. I grab a big scoop of mashed potatoes.

“Fine,” I say.

“Anything interesting going on?”

“A boy asked me to homecoming.” The words are out before I realize what I said. That’s what I get for letting my guard down.

I have absolutely no idea how they’ll react to me saying someone invited me to a dance, and I’m honestly a little scared.

My father sits up straighter. “What guy?”

Oh God, here we go.

“Jackson. He lives nearby. It’s not a big deal.”

My mother and father stare at me, but I continue to eat. My mom knows about the Jackson thing, but I know she’ll hop onto whatever my father says about the matter. It all comes down to if he’s okay with it, and I’m getting the feeling he’s not.

I shove a piece of grilled chicken smothered in garlicky mashed potatoes into my mouth. My God, this stuff is good. I can feel a meltdown coming, and I want as much of this food as I can get.

“I won’t have it,” my father eventually says.

And now I’m starting to get angry. I want to yell at him, tell him that I’m sixteen, he can’t stop me from talking to boys. But I don’t. What did fighting back ever get me?

I take a big bite of my dinner roll and try to enjoy it.

“Well, we did say we wanted her to be normal,” my mother says.

That’s new. I’m not sure my mother has ever been on my side for anything. Or maybe it’s just because she doesn’t know what side I’m on since I refuse to stop shoving food into my mouth.

“Nora,” my father says in a low tone. “This will not turn out well.”

Now I can’t help myself. “It’s just a dance. It’s not like—”

“The boy is the cop’s son,” my father says. “He’s probably watching you.”

“He’s
what
?”

He’s the son of a cop? And he might just be watching me? For what?

Whatever. Who cares? I take a big deep breath and continue to eat. I’m not a fan of cops, like at all, but I don’t do anything wrong, not anymore. So I shouldn’t have anything to worry about. He’s making a big deal over nothing.

“Sweetie,” my mom says. After a moment, I realize she’s waiting for me to look at her. When I do, she says, “Do you want to go to homecoming with this boy?”

That’s a question even I hadn’t really thought of an answer for.

What do I want?

My father grips his knife and fork. “It’s not a question of what she wants. I forbid her from—”

“But Sarah said we should give her a little freedom.” She’s holding it together, but when I look at her lap, I can see her folded hands shaking.

Sarah. My father’s narrowed eyes say it all. To him, her very name is a threat.

“Sarah said?” He shakes his head. “I won’t let anyone—not her, not you—tell me how to fix this. At least in New York, it was just Anna’s reputation on the line. But now it’s us. Our family. You know what’ll happen if we let her do this, don’t you?”

My mom takes a deep breath and looks at me. “We have to start trusting her sooner or later, don’t we?”

My words coming from her mouth.

My father says nothing, just stares at both of us, dumbfounded, his rage festering.

I can’t believe what Mom said.

I could be wrong, but…I think she just stood up for me.

I rise to my feet. “Jackson asked me to go,” I say, wiping my hands on my pants. “You want me to be normal, right? Homecoming is normal, and I’m going.”

I drop my plate in the sink and walk out of the kitchen. Now they’re looking at each other, but my father hasn’t said anything else. I think that means I win.

Or at least that my father lost.

Just before I reach my room, I call out, “And I’ll need money for a dress.”

Chapter Twenty

I
wait until my parents go to sleep, then I sneak Zara into my room again. I set my alarm for early.
Early
early, since I already have to get up around six for school. Why do they do that? We’re teenagers, we need our sleep.

Zara curls up next to me and licks my hand. It’s gross, but it’s a worthy sacrifice to have her here.

I feel better, safer, with her next to me. Not because I expect her to bite an intruder—that’s just ignorant to me—but because I’m not alone. Feeling her warmth next to me is comforting.

Zara and I are in this together now.

I
wake up not to my alarm but to the harsh sound of my father’s voice echoing down the hallway.

What time is it? The clock says 1:14, and the lack of sunlight tells me it’s most definitely not the afternoon. What in the world is my father doing up—and yelling—in the middle of the night?

Zara lets out a little huff and rolls onto her side, and within a few seconds she’s snoring. Even she thinks it’s crazy to be up right now.

I close my eyes and wonder if I’ll make it back to sleep so easily, but now I’m awake enough to make out what my father says next.

“This is not our fault!” he yells.

My mom says something, but it’s too distant—the volume too indoor-appropriate—for me to make out her words.

Zara lifts her head when I get out of bed, but I lift my index finger to my lips, then point at the bed, and she seems to understand what I want, because when I back up to the door, she doesn’t move, just watches me tiptoe out the room. I shut the door behind me.

The carpet in the hallway tickles my feet, a soft reminder of how many times years ago I crept down this path in the middle of the night, sometimes to sneak out, sometimes to get a snack, but always to avoid my parents.

It feels eerily similar now. Except while I don’t want them to notice me, I do want to hear what they’re saying.

The glow of the living room light reaches the end of the hallway, and I stop at the corner and peek around the edge enough to see them.

My mom’s on the couch, her arms crossed over her chest. My dad’s pacing in front of her.

“You want to say it,” he says. “I know you want to say it. So go ahead.”

She holds her arms tighter around herself. “I talked to Sarah, and she said that maybe we were right to be concerned about Anna—”

“Sarah said?
Sarah
said?”

She pauses, and it’s like I can smell her fear, pungent and powerful.

“Nora, if I have to ask you one more time to just spit it out…”

She nods, and after another second continues. “She said we were right to be concerned, but that maybe, well, we should take it easy on her because…well, she ran away for a reason, Martin.”

“So Sarah thinks this is my fault, too?”

“No. Not your fault. It’s mine, too…”

“This is
Anna
’s fault, Nora. No one else’s.”

“But Sarah says…”

He puts his hand over his eyes and rubs them. “You think
Sarah
knows a thing about how this family works? Or how it needs to work?”

“I just think she has more experience with this kind of thing than we—”

“You think Sarah knows better than me?”

Mom hunches her shoulders forward and bows her head. “I didn’t say that. But she cares about—”

“We didn’t push Anna to run away. And if that’s the kind of insight her ‘experience’ has given her, she’s got a lot further to go if she wants to be any good at her job.”

“Martin, you’re being ridiculous,” my mother whispers.

My father paces in front of her like he didn’t even hear. Maybe he didn’t. “Everyone thinks I’m a bad father. That I did this.” His voice is lighter, softer than I think I’ve ever heard. He always tried to be so tough in front of me, never letting me see anything but the disciplinarian. “I’m just doing what needs to be done. It’s the way I was raised. If anything, we were too soft on her.
You
were too soft. If we let her get away with…”

“Then maybe she would have never run away.”

He pauses. The whole room seems to freeze, and even my heart stops. Not the right thing to say, Mom.

The shadows shift over his face as his jaw clenches. My mother’s eyes grow wide as she realizes her mistake.

She quickly says, “I’m just trying to imagine what it was like for Anna.” I might be imagining things, but I think I see her lower lip tremble. “I want to know why she left.”

He throws up his hands in mock defeat. “For God’s sake, Nora, I did everything I could to teach her, and for her to know those lessons, however hard, were because we loved her. It’s not my fault she took things the wrong way.”

“I know you tried. You did your best.”

“My absolute best,” he says. “But you keep acting like that’s not good enough. That’s what you think, right?”

“No. Of course not. But if that’s how she felt…”

He paces away from her, then with his back to her, he says, “Then what? Just say it.”

“Then maybe we had something to do with her feeling that way.”

He turns around, a look in his eye that I know well. He means business. Any softness he had is gone now, back to the father I always knew. My mother shrinks into the couch, and that must be enough to satisfy him, because he turns away.

He takes his coat off the rack by the front door. “I’m going for a drive.” He opens the door. “I’m giving you some time to think about this. If you haven’t dropped this nonsense by the time I get back it, just don’t say anything at all.”

A
n annoying buzzing sound fills my room, but I just throw a pillow over my head. No, I do not want to wake up. It took me another hour to get back to sleep, and even then I woke up at least three or four times.

A cold wet nose nudges my arm, and she’s so strong she actually starts pushing me toward the edge of the bed.

“Fine!” I say in a hiss.

I sit up and press the stupid button to turn off the alarm. This is ridiculous. Zara tilts her head at me.

I am not in the mood this morning.

I grab a hoodie and throw on my tennis shoes. She runs out the door the second I open it. For a moment I think she’s making a break for it, but when I walk into the kitchen, I see her waiting at the back door. She’s pretty damn smart.

I open the door, and she runs out. This time though, she doesn’t run right to her doghouse, she starts running around the yard. I realize after a moment of watching blankly—it’s too early in the morning for me to think clearly—that she’s playing. Now it’s my turn to tilt my head.

She runs one way, stops suddenly, then runs the other way. It looks, strangely, like she’s smiling as she does it.

“Girlfriend, you have to pick a decent hour to play next time.”

Still, I walk to a stick a few feet away and throw it for her. She runs, stops to sniff the stick before picking it up, then brings it to me. I think she wants me to throw it again, but when I reach for it, she jerks her head away. Then she starts jumping around again.

I make a sudden move, like I’m going to try to take it, and she runs joyfully around. My lips curl into a smile. She’s so goofy. Goofy like Jackson.

I run toward her, and she runs the opposite way, but already my toes are going numb. Shoes would have been a good idea.

Giving up, I walk to the doghouse and hold up the chain. She brings the stick to me, and I click the latch onto her collar. She barely notices. When I walk away, she just stands there looking at me.

I look back once I reach the door, and she’s chewing on her stick.

I feel really good that I can make her life a little bit better. Like my life has a small amount of meaning.

I go inside and take a quick shower. By the time I dress and walk into the kitchen, my mother is awake and sitting at the table with a cup of coffee.

“Morning,” she says.

Once, I’d have hated her for being so nice. Why pretend? But after last night, maybe I can try taking her seriously.

“Morning,” I say, I say, then glance toward their bedroom. “Is he…?”

“Still asleep. He was up pretty late.”

“Oh.”

Of course I know that she was up late, too. Her cup of coffee. The fresh pot on the counter. This isn’t just her morning ritual. She looks…exhausted. At least I made it back to bed. She looks like she didn’t sleep at all.

She sips from her cup. “What are your plans after school?”

“Going to Jackson’s to work on the art project, I guess.”

“What about tomorrow?”

I shrug.

I guess she takes that as an opening, because she gives me a surprisingly bright smile and says, “Okay, we can go shopping.”

“Shopping…?”

“You’ll need a dress. You said so last night.”

Oh God. Shopping with my mother. That’s not what I meant when I said I’d need a dress.

I sigh. I guess there are a lot of things I need anyway. I’m still wearing the expensive but much too conservative clothes my parents had waiting for me when I came back home.

I want to ask her whether it’s worth the fuss knowing how Dad’s probably going to react. Oh, who am I kidding? Probably? I
know
he’s going to be pissed. He’s already about to blow.

But I can’t take it if she says I’m right. If she says we shouldn’t go shopping.

I want to get the dress. I want to go to the dance with Jackson. If that’s a problem for my father, I’ll deal with it later.

“Okay,” I say. I grab my bag and head for the door.

“Have a good day,” she calls sweetly.

Well, that was interesting. I always wondered where I got my rebel streak when my mom’s such a pushover, but the way she’s acting now?

I’m not sure what she’s up to. I sense some kind of diabolical plan.

I
sit next to Jackson on the bus, and even though nothing seems any different between us, it’s impossible to ignore the whispers around us that say we’re a couple. Original.

I don’t really care what they have to say. I wonder if Jackson does, but he doesn’t seem to notice at all.

We walk into school together and sit at his spot at the bottom of the secret staircase. I mean, it’s not really a secret, but not many people go there, so that’s what I like to call it.

Jackson talks about his friends calling him last night, how he told them he was going to homecoming with me.

“How’d they take it?” I ask.

“They’re worried.”

“Because of me?”

He raises his eyebrow, like he’s confused by my question. “No. Because of what happened with my last girlfriend. They’d be like this no matter who I was going with.”

I nod, because I get it. “I kind of did the same thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“I told my parents I was going with you.”

“Really? How’d they take it?”

“Like your friends.” I shrug and leave it at that. It’s way too complicated to get into. “Guess that makes it official.”

His eyes light up in a way that makes my stomach flip. I like seeing him happy. Happy about me.

He really does make me feel like a normal girl. Happy. Innocent.

Special.

Then the bell rings. I drop by my locker first, then head to class. I feel almost like a real high school student. I know my schedule, I have friends (plural!), and I’m going to homecoming. I even did my homework.

Nasty looks and whispers aren’t something you ever really get used to, but you can certainly pretend. I have perfected my “fuck you” look, and people steer away from me for the most part.

The school day goes fast for me. Or at least, it doesn’t feel like a full year, which is an accomplishment. My new misfit group of friends sit together at lunch and discuss more random things like what country would we most like to travel to and who’s funnier, Tina Fey or Stephen Colbert.

Jen tells me she had something come up with her family, so she’s ditching my tutor session for the day. That’s okay. I figure I can do my homework alone for one night.

Or I could not do homework at all…

I nudge Jackson with my elbow. “We still on for later?”

His eyes light up. “You know it. Why?”

“I might be available a little earlier than expected.” I nod to Jen. “She’s ditching me today.”

“Hey!” she says. “I’m not ditching anyone.” I give her a quick wink, and she blushes.

“But now I’m free right after school.”

“Awesome!” he says, smiling bigger than I’ve ever seen.

Today I feel very far from the girl living with Luis in New York.

A
fter lunch I have health, which is basically just a class about sex. We learn all about STDs and pregnancy and all the things they try to teach us to keep us from having sex. I figure I’m pretty well past that, so it’s not a class I take very seriously.

When the last bell finally rings, I rush from the room and out to the courtyard to call my mom and let her know I’m going to Jackson’s after school.

She sounds worried, but I don’t give her a chance to argue. As soon as I click the phone shut, I rush back inside to find Jackson. I keep my head low as I pass a group of boys crowded in the corner. One of them is Marissa’s nasty boyfriend Brandon.

“Dude, that’s hot,” one boy says low, like it’s a secret. I take a peek at what they’re doing. They’re crowded around Brandon, who’s holding his cell phone. I can hear the muffled sounds of a video playing, too indistinct to make out.

Then I hear the moans.

Are they seriously watching porn in the middle of school?

Perverts.

Please welcome the future johns of America, everyone
.

I shake my head and turn to keep walking, but then Brandon calls out, “Eric says you’ve got one of these floating around, don’t you?”

I stop. Two boys walk right up next to me on either side, Brandon and a redheaded jock who must be Eric.

The jock leans in. “I’d love to see it one day.” He puts his arms around me and I don’t move. I know better than to struggle; it only makes it worse. Besides, I’m no stranger to sticky breath in my face.

“Like I’d be that stupid,” I say, keeping my eyes forward, my expression calm.

Brandon laughs. “You know how much power there is in sex, then.”